The Law of Happiness and Divorce is a contemporary dark comedy about a young man, Bailey, struggling to make his way in a world he naively believes to be just.

He falls in love with Jenna, who takes it upon herself to educate him to the realities of the world. As Jenna and Bailey’s relationship grows they befriend a drug addict named Kylie. When Jenna discovers she can’t have children and Kylie falls pregnant the three become entwined as a family.

Over the next five years, as Bailey goes from dead end name tag job to corporate executive, he becomes addicted to drugs and power at the expense of his morals. With Kylie losing her battle to rehabilitate herself from drugs and Bailey so changed he’s able to reconcile actions that hurt those around him, Kylie takes drastic action to remove the worst influences from her young son’s life, leaving Jenna to raise her child alone.

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

I'm now at episode six and while I'm still enjoying this new Mathew Perry sitcom - I'm starting to suspect it should have been a movie and not a series. The ending of the movie would have come at the end of the episode with the fountain in the back yard.

After that you get a very strong sense, that the unusual and extraordinary aspect of the series, that it's about characters in hiatus trying to solve problems before moving on with their lives, may be the very reason why it suddenly and so quickly feels stale.

We're back in therapy and opening out the characters in therapy, exploring and introducing new aspects of their lives, and I can't help feeling disappointed. Not because these characters aren't interesting, but the direction breaks the promise set up at the beginning of the series. A promise that seemed hollow to me and yet worked so well through the first few episodes - that was the very reason I was excited by this show. How would the writers and producers deliver on the promise of entertaining, surprising and generating laughs out of nothing and keep me interested?

By episode 6 the episode focus is on Ryan's grief eating and the feel good warmth of the group feels empty because the subject is banal and trivial. This is a subplot at best. Ryan's wife died and he's eating too much - shoot me for being insensitive but eating doughnuts for a while, looking as FAT as Mathew Perry, just doesn't resonate as something to be overly concerned about, especially when it suddenly appears without ever being set up in earlier episodes. So he binged for a week - Meh!

Will Go On will go on? It would do well to look at Breaking Bad and take notes. Breaking Bad hit the end of its driving journey a number of times and rather than continuing to bash away and find new wrinkles in the same folds, it backed the truck out and took a new direction.And it did this brilliantly and believably.

First was the drugs for cancer plot - then Walter White and Jesse as pawns in the pocket of the big drug cartel - then they were forced to outplay the cartel and introduce the growing Heisenberg myth as the new druglord - the Kysa Suze of the City. Finally they left us with Walter's retirement, then the carrot to sell into an overseas market with what seemed like the perfect solution that is ruined when the DEA brother in law finds the clue to WW's identity. That's 4 separate concepts in 5 seasons. People will berate them for simply changing decks when things slowed, but to me it's been great prime time storytelling.

Go On needs to find a direction. The characters are great, the therapy group as an odd ensemble of characters are great - but we need a story that keeps us feeling, laughing and wanting more from them all. I'd be going for the sports DJ element. Great and unexpected success due to grief and while dealing with a crumbling personal life is interesting to everyone - and success being enjoyed at great personal expense seems to be tolerated far better than straight out success.

So go on Go On! Give us a kink, a twist, an unexpected turn. You know you want to!

Study finds pirates spend 30% more on music than non-sharers

The American Assembly, a Columbia University affiliated public policy forum, has posted some surprising results about online music purchases by internet file-sharers. Their studies have found that US and German file-sharers spend around 30 per cent more on legitimate online music purchases than users who do not pirate music via the internet.

Copied from Drudge Report.

This is a subject I've discussed with both film and TV producers and Music producers - and my argument, based purely on my own habits, is in line with what this finding shows.

I really didn't buy much music at all until 2000. I bought lots of films and TV episodes, but music was on the radio and I had a collection that had twice been outdated by new technology - as a kid I spent lots on vinyl and cassettes - all of which were donated to the charity shop or hit the bin when DVDs came out.

But then I discovered Kazzar, and Emule and others while I lived in Indonesia, Poland and Russia. I went download crazy - because who's going to prosecute an IP address from one of those countries?

The book that sat in the bookshop window in Moscow when I lived there from 2002 until 2004 was Гэри рысака. (Gary Trotter) He was a blonde haired bespectacled kid who didn't know he was a wizard and ended up going to wizard school at a place called Woghorts - or something equally ridiculous. I read somewhere that J K Rowling and her team have been trying to sue the Russian publishers for years - but of course they can't get any satisfaction.

So I didn't have much fear of the download and I built up a decent collection. I downloaded all the music I had spent my life savings to collect twice already as a kid, only to see the technology become obsolete. And because of this I felt no guilt whatsoever. I downloaded new artists and searched for anyone I heard that I liked. Then a funny thing happened - artists that I found online, that I illegally downloaded - I fell in love with and eagerly bought their DVD or online download to get the best quality recording possible.

My argument was always how is this any different to the way radio works in the promoting of artists? Rather than listening to a radio station filled with ads that create revenue for the station, the artists can be found online in a direct plug to the listening audience who will then decide if they'll buy or not.

I've never understood why this isn't understood by the artists. Why don't they release the cheaper version online for free wherever they can. Some artists use to release tracks that had a pulsar sound recurring through it once every 30 seconds or so, others released half the song or a shorter version.

These days I listen to most things via hosted sights like vevo or youtube and make up my mind whether to buy from there. Of course, if something needs to be heard a few times I am happy to still convert and add to my library - but if the song does become a favourite - I am quick to pay money to get the best version possible into my collection.

As for Film and TV - I make a point to never download a movie. A movie is something you generally look at once and then move on so there's no try before you buy here. I do read a lot of reviews and I have trusted reviewers who usually let me know if it's something I'll like or not.

But TV is a completely different story, especially in Australia where our isolation means the TV stations treat viewers with contempt because the majority of people have never been overseas to live and experience a better service. Some shows like Matt Le blancs fantastic Episodes arrives on screen well over a year after he won the Emmy for best comedy performance. Other shows get moved around in timeslots and almost all shows run late and make taping the episodes you're not home for impossible. Then the stations complain because the audience is dissipating. Is it any wonder? And all I need is the flimsiest excuse to jump on line and get my favourite shows days after they air for the first time - and the Australian TV networks very rarely fail to supply this excuse for me.

And even here the original idea holds true - for shows that I like or love online, that I happen to see on network TV at a later date, I will almost always stop and watch over other choices because I know it's something I enjoy.

So I guess my message to the download police is lighten up. Use downloading as a tool to advertise, find a way to imbed ads, make full screen viewing without pay impossible and see an online availability as the ultimate preview to the product. And don't go complaining when people don't fork out cash for that product later - they would have if they liked it better. The days of being able to sell bad products from one good promo, one good episode or one good song in a career of otherwise mediocre B side fair is well and truly over.

This is the age of choice and the try before you buy consumers. You can't keep expecting us to simply buy the same creative product over and over again.

About Me

Scott Norton Taylor - I worked for Fremantlemedia for many years running Neighbours and Home and Away script Departments, I set up drama shows in Indonesia, Poland and Russia and am now working on projects in Australia.